The Role of Job Attributes in Understanding the Public-Private Wage Differential

This study uses a unique data set for Great Britain to investigate the impact of differences in job attributes on the public-private wage differential. The study reveals that (1) there are substantial differences in wage structure between the two sectors, particularly finding that the public-sector wage structure is less sensitive to differences in the attributes of jobs, and (2) differences in job attributes play in a major role in accounting for pay differences across sectors.     

Evidence on the Causes of the Rising Dispersion of Relative Wages

In this paper, a neoclassical model of interindustry wage dispersion is derived and used to examine explicitly the fundamental role of microeconomic variables in determining relative wage movements. The empirical results demonstrate that the variance of labor quality and capital intensities across sectors are the primary determinants of the movement of the dispersion of relative wages within the manufacturing sector in the postwar period. Although the relative wage structure exhibits some response to unemployment, it is not sensitive to changes in inflation. The macro variables were also of limited quantitative importance in explaining changes in the relative wage structure.     

‘Fair Work’ and the Modernization of Australian Labour Standards: A Case of Institutional Plasticity Entrenching Deepening Wage Inequality

Australia was long recognized for its relatively compressed wage structure. From the 1940s to the 1970s this was associated with a comprehensive regime of ‘award‐based’ minimum wages. Since the 1980s, this has been subjected to comprehensive ‘modernization’. After three decades of reform and in the most supportive economic environment in the OECD, Australian wage inequality has deepened. Although multiple political‐economic forces have been at play, the evolution of Australia's labour standards regime is an example of ‘institutional plasticity’ whereby the purpose and operations of wage‐setting institutions not only evolves but can actually be inverted over time.     

Unions and Wages in Australia: Does Employer Size Matter?

Industrial relations reforms starting in the late 1980s decentralized wage determination in Australia. Using data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Survey of Education and Training gathered in 1993, before the full effects of decentralization had been realized, and in 2001, after which the impacts of structural changes had become manifested, the study shows the emergence of an inverse relationship between the employer size–wage effect and union/nonunion wage differential among male workers. The relationship is similar to those found in the United States and the UK, other economies with decentralized wage‐setting regimes.     

Services innovation and the transformation of work: the case of UK telecommunications

Current transformations in technologies and industrial structure of UK telecommunications have important implications for skills and work organisation. This is examined in different divisions of a large UK telecommunications firm: call centres, customer service centres, engineering sectors and the R&D department. The effect of these transformations on the development of firm competences is discussed.     

The relationship between UK manufacturers’ inventory levels and supply,internal and market factors

A major survey of UK manufacturing plants was carried out to explore the relationships between certain factors and inventory levels. These factors include procurement lead time, customer delivery lead time, manufacturing lead time and levels of predictability of raw materials availability and customer demand levels. The sample for the study comprises UK manufacturing plants in different industrial sectors including engineering, process, electronics, household products and food sectors. The results of a correlation analysis show that supply chain management issues such as the procurement lead time and the frequency of raw materials delivery are significantly linked with the inventory level of manufacturing plants. Also, manufacturing lead times were found to be associated with inventory levels but there was no significant relationship between customer delivery lead times and inventory levels.     

Bargaining Structure and Wage Outcomes in the British Coal Industry

The arguments below use case study and time series data to investigate the relationship between bargaining structure and wage settlements in the British coal industry. Consideration of the different bargaining structures in this industry suggests that bargaining power and wage outcomes are very sensitive to market conditions when the negotiating structure is decentralized; when negotiations are centralized in industry-wide bargaining, power and wage outcomes are quite insensitive to market conditions. These conclusions may help in understanding recent events in this industry and perhaps can be generalized to other cases where bargaining structures are undergoing change.     

企业对员工的人力资本投资研究

本文利用最新的调查数据研究了企业提供的培训与员工个人特征、企业特征和员工企业匹配特征之间的关系，以及企业培训实践对工资水平的决定效应。研究发现，企业提供的培训投资呈现了极不平衡的现象：技能水平和职位等级高的员工能获得大量的培训投资，处于企业生产和技术部门的一般员工获得的培训投资显著偏低；国有企业大量投资于员工的一般培训，不注重企业专用培训，而外资企业则刚好相反；技术资本密集或者技术进步较快的企业比传统劳动密集型企业更注重员工培训。研究还发现，企业向员工提供的大部分一般培训显著地影响了员工的工资水平。研究结果有助于理解国有企业员工在劳动力市场中的工作转换模式。     

Wages Councils: Was There a Case for Abolition?

The 1993 Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act removed the remaining minimum wage protection for some 2.5 million low paid workers by abolishing the last 26 UK Wages Councils. The Government's case for abolition rested on three key arguments: (1) minimum wages do little to alleviate poverty since most covered workers do not live in poor households; (2) when in operation, minimum wages reduced employment in covered industries; (3) the problems of poverty that the wages councils were set up to deal with in 1909 are not relevant in today's labour market. In this paper we address each of these points in turn. We find that: (a) 50 per cent of families with at least one earner being paid wages council rates come from the poorest 20 per cent of families; (b) the existing evidence suggests that abolishing the Wages Councils is unlikely to create jobs; (c) the widening earnings distribution in the UK means that low pay is an increasingly important determinant of poverty. If anything, there appears to be an increasing need for minimum wage legislation in the UK.     

The Impact of Wage Bargaining Regime on Firm‐Level Competitiveness and Wage Inequality: The Case of Ireland

This paper uses a linked employer‐employee dataset to analyze the impact of institutional wage bargaining regimes on average labor costs and within‐firm wage dispersion in private sector companies in Ireland. The results show that while centralized bargaining reduced labor costs within both the indigenous and foreign‐owned sectors, the relative advantage was greater among foreign‐owned firms. The analysis suggests that there are potentially large competitiveness gains to multinational companies that locate in countries implementing a centralized bargaining system. Furthermore, the results provide additional support to the view that collective bargaining reduces within‐firm wage inequality.     

Low Pay and Wage Regulation in the European Community

The prospect of direct intervention in the process of wage determination as envisaged in the Social Charter has met with considerable criticism. In particular, employers' organizations and certain governments have rejected outright the proposal to require firms to pay an equitable wage. However, in all member-states except the UK and Ireland, arrangements exist to ensure that nearly all workers are covered by minimum wage protection (through national minimum wages or full-coverage collective agreements). In this article the nature of low-paid employment in member-states is examined and different methods of wage regulation are described. After reviewing the economic effects of wage regulation, we discuss possible initiatives on wage regulation at the Community level.     

Britain and BrExit: Is the UK more attractive to supervisors? An analysis of the wage premium to supervision across the EU

We studied which European Union (EU) economy was more attractive prior to Brexit for employees in supervisory positions. We estimate the extra wage that supervisors earn relative to their subordinates—the wage premium to supervision (WPS)—at different quantiles of distribution of wages for 26 European economies. We find that the UK rewards supervisors more than other EU economies. Moreover, the WPS increases with wage and so increases wage inequality. Over 10% of the WPS depends on the national economic context. We discuss the implications for immigration and policymakers in relation to the post-Brexit process.     

Pay and Job Rank among Academic Economists in the UK: Is Gender Relevant?

This article presents and explores a rich new data source to analyse the determinants of pay and job rank among academic economists in the UK. Characteristics associated with individual productivity and workplace features are found to be important determinants of the relative wage and promotion structure in this sector. However, there is also a substantial unexplained gender pay gap. Men are considerably more likely to work in higher paid job ranks where there are also substantial within-rank gender pay gaps. We show that the nature of the gender pay gap has changed over the last two decades; but its size has not, suggesting a role for suitable policy intervention.     

外部关税变动对中国区域劳动力就业的影响

本文利用UNCTAD数据和中国人口普查微观数据,基于地区就业的行业结构和贸易对象国对中国征收的行业层面的进口关税,构建地区层面外部关税变动指标,研究外部关税变动对中国区域劳动力就业的影响。研究发现:(1)外部关税下降幅度越高的地区,总体就业、可贸易部门和不可贸易部门的就业增加也越多;(2)出口和内销规模扩张的就业创造效应、生产率提升的就业破坏效应,是外部关税下降影响地区可贸易部门就业的重要渠道;(3)外部关税下降带来的地区可贸易部门出口扩张、就业增加和工资上涨,通过产业关联和消费驱动等正向溢出效应增加地区不可贸易部门就业,通过就业的部门间再配置效应减少地区不可贸易部门就业;(4)外部关税下降对地区不可贸易部门就业的影响呈现出先抑制后促进的动态演进过程,这与外部关税变动下中国区域劳动力供给的调整紧密相关。此外,外部关税变动对地区不同属性劳动力就业的影响效果存在显著差异。本文的研究结论对于外部关税变动下稳定区域劳动力就业的相关政策制定具有一定的参考意义。     

Rising Wage Inequality, Returns to Education and Labour Market Institutions: Evidence from Ireland

Institutional factors and increased supply of skilled labour have been advanced in an effort to explain why some countries have experienced smaller increases in earnings dispersion and in returns to education than the USA and the UK. Ireland has had a highly centralized wage bargaining structure and the supply of skilled labour has increased sharply in recent years; hence, relatively little change in earnings dispersion might be expected. We compare the distribution of earnings in Ireland in 1987 and 1994 and find a surprisingly large growth in earnings dispersion. In addition, using a decomposition technique, we find that much of this is accounted for by increasing returns to measured.     

Income Inequality: An Inter-Industry Analysis

This paper offers new evidence that inter-industry inequality has increased since the early seventies. An examination of de industrialization, segmented labor market, and international competition explanations of this increase shows that the growth of inequality is accounted for mainly by growing wage differentials among industries, notably between primacy and secondary sectors. Employment shifts out of middle-wage industries and employment and wage effects of international trade do not explain the inequality increase.     

Benefits of co-operation on innovative performance: evidence from integrated circuits and biotechnology firms in the UK and Taiwan

The increase of strategic alliance and national or pan-national government collaborative programmes has highlighted the shifting management and policy focus from inducing in-house R&D to promoting a joint partnership between firms and knowledge-generating organisations in the increasingly complex and costly innovation process. Both the 'dynamic capability' school and the 'innovation network' theorists demonstrate that inter-organisational co-operation has become a crucial mechanism for 'collective innovation'. However, little attempt has been undertaken to examine the relationship between inter-organisational co-operation and innovative performance at the firm level. The innovative activities and inter-organisational co-operation of integrated circuits and biotechnology sectors across Taiwan and the UK are investigated via a postal questionnaire survey. Multiple logistic regression models are deployed. The result reveals that the types of inter-organisational co-operation enhancing a firm's innovative performance vary across sectors and countries. Despite the variation, this paper argues that a firm's networking ability to co-operate with buyer firms, supplier firms and external organisations is becoming imperative for enhancing innovation in the increasingly distributed innovation process.     

The Reserve Army Effect, Unions, and Nominal Wage Growth

This paper analyzes the reserve army effect from a perspective which integrates propositions from the social structures of accumulation and regulation approaches. The magnitude of the reserve army effect on nominal wage growth ought to vary according to the subperiods 1958–1970, 1970–1980, and 1980–1987, and also according to subsectors with different unionization rates. This hypothesis is tested empirically by estimating the effect of demand pressure variables on nominal wage growth for heavily, moderately, and lightly unionized sectors. The results generally confirm the hypothesis, while at the same time showing clear differences in the impact of collective bargaining on the reserve army effect between 1958–1970 and 1980–1987.     

The Rise of Experimentalism in German Collective Bargaining

This paper addresses the debate on union strategies by analysing industrial relations change in three of Germany's most internationalized sectors: chemicals, metalworking and construction. It characterizes two logics of change in German industrial relations: a battlefield logic and an experimentalist logic. It demonstrates historical trends towards centralization of wage bargaining in each sector before looking at recent pressures for decentralization and flexibility. In chemi‐cals, the social partners control decentralization. In metalworking increasing flexibility is characterized by a mismatch between the national‐level union and the district‐level employers. Finally, the construction union seeks to replace the centralized bargaining system with a state minimum wage.